Fire Crews Battle Clock

Competition Helps To Keep Firefighters In Tiptop Shape For When Alarm Bell Sounds

May 24, 1993|By Paul Sloan.

They climb into burning buildings.

They pull children from smoke-filled rooms.

Yet they're often thought of as lazy. Or, more specifically, as "sitting around gambling, playing cards and drinking beer," said Orland Fire Protection District Lt. Kevin Kitchen, one of many firefighters who voiced similar concerns about their image.

Aiming to prove that portrait wrong and test their own strength, more than 200 firefighters from across the region came to Orland Park Saturday and Sunday to drag hoses up stairs and tug 175-pound dummies through a maze of real-life tasks that sent several competitors stumbling to the ambulance for hits of oxygen.

This was the annual Firefighter Combat Challenge, a fiercely competitive event that, as one firefighter put it, is "spreading like wildfire."

Last year's national champion, a man from Casper, Wyo., who soared through the course in 2 minutes, 3 seconds (a 5-minute time is considered excellent), reportedly trained by strapping himself in a harness and pulling a Honda Civic up hills.

Other participants who came to Orland's Regional Training Center Sunday said they'd been lifting weights, bicycling and running. One man said he jogs in full firefighting garb.

Departments nationwide use the course, designed in the mid-1970s for the U.S. Fire Administration, as part of their entrance exam. It aims to take men and women (who make up 1 percent of the nation's firefighters) through the same rigors they'd meet at a fire, except, of course, for the fire itself.

Judging from the faces of the competitors Sunday, it meets its goal.

At least one man dropped to the ground in mid-course, and firefighters, as they crossed the finish line, fell onto mats and let their teammates yank the gear from their bodies. Flush-faced, they stumbled off, sweating, gasping, searching for water and sprawling onto nearby grass.

"They usually snap out of it soon," said Orland Park firefighter and paramedic Lenny Breese, who manned the continually busy tent beside the ambulance, doling out oxygen and Gatorade.

"It takes a fair amount of courage just to come out," said 34-year-old De Kalb firefighter Kevin McCauley (time: 3:11), in between gulps of air.

Steve Berry, an Elgin fire lieutenant, could testify to the value of being fit. He and six other firefighters were trapped last Tuesday when fire engulfed the R.R. Donnelly building in Elgin.

The men were battling the blaze on the brick building's second floor, where the fire began, when buzzers sounded in their masks, alerting them their air supplies were low.

The group tried to leave but, buried in darkness and dense smoke, couldn't find the exit. After 4 or 5 minutes, one of the men eventually saw some light. Another grabbed a chair and heaved it through the window from which the men then crawled to safety.

"I thought for sure we weren't coming out of there," said Berry, who likened the experience to being disoriented underwater. "We were blindly feeling our way."

After running the much less nerve-racking test course in Orland Park, the very-fit looking 39-year-old said, laughing, that he "only scored 3:35. But I was in the hospital Monday night for smoke inhalation."

The motivation at the competition, of course, is far different than the adrenalin that pumps a body trying to save a life, your own or someone else's. The setting, too, with rock music blaring from the high-rise training tower, is quite a bit tamer.

But as McCauley said as he paced to regain the strength in his legs, "It's the same muscle groups."

Weighed down by air tanks and firefighting suits, the competitors had to pull 50 pounds of hose up the stairs of the three-story tower. Then, while leaning out a window, they hoisted a 50-foot roll of hose. Next, they scampered down the stairwell and onto a machine, where they had to drive a steel beam meant to simulate smashing down a door.

They walked 140 feet (running, not recommended in real fire scenes, cost 5 penalty seconds), and they tugged a water-filled hose for 75 feet. Then they sprayed some water, grabbed a dummy victim, picked him up and hauled him 100 feet to the finish line.

More than 50 fire departments, from across the Chicago area and as far as Toledo, competed. Two teams from Orland, and one each from Palatine, Moline and Rockford were in the top five, and at least the top four are scheduled to go to Dallas this August for the nationals.

The Combat Challenge is sponsored by a number of companies that make firefighting products or who have an interest in the field, such as insurance firms. Participants are broken into groups: men, women, over 40, and fire chiefs.

"I'm 50 years old," boasted gray-haired and slender Palatine firefighter Lt. Bill Noland, who, with a time of 2:38, earned the admiration of all in attendance. "Fifty years old."

His team came in first.

The winners get the satisfaction of knowing that perhaps they helped improve the image of firefighters, or at least those firefighters who are willing to give up a weekend to compete.

Reminded of the stereotype of couch-bound firefighters, a panting McCauley said, "Those days are past. I wish they'd come back once in a while."